Yes. My late husband. And I still feel guilty.
He was emotionally abusive to me, and physically abusive to our son. He was a controlling, jealous asshole… He also had congestive heart failure. He didn’t work even when he was well, so we never had enough money. I would have left him if he wasn’t dying.
My step brother. I think he was a sociopath. He was smart, personable, and knew how to make people like him, but his mother messed him up pretty good before his father took custody. He thought only in terms of himself. We were a brady bunch (my mom had 4 and hid dad had 3), and he had two younger sisters. when I was 16 or so he tried to molest them. They pushed him out of their room and told their dad. It was a big deal for a while but he could charm his dad and people sort of forgot about. Then when I was 18 and about to go into the military I found out he was molesting my little sister. He switched to her because she had Tourette’s and was much easier to manipulate. I had to confront my step father and force him to move his son out of the house or I would call CPS and have them all removed. It put a strain on our relationship for years. A year later he was kicked out of the Job Corps for failing a drug test and then got caught bring drugs to my folks house to share. He died a year after that driving drunk with his sisters in the car. His only real friend ended up brain damaged and he ended up dead.
I felt hugely relieved and guilty to feel that way. I realized that what I was most relieved about was that I had always been afraid that he would do something so bad that I would have to do something truly drastic about it.
Jonathan
I know someone who feels quite a bit the way you do, only about her father. It was a relief that finally the rest of the family could live a normal life. Everyone has been so much happier that it’s been like the family has been transformed. They even look healthier and heartier now that no one is living under that cloud of stress. They looked like people who had been liberated from some kind of prison, actually.
Yes. A miserable uncle who made everybody around him miserable too.
He died on the highway when a semi crossed the median, became airborne, and landed on his car. Pancake. Good-bye, too bad it wasn’t sooner.
I can think of a couple other waste-of-spaces, one related and one not.
A (former) friend of mine who decided that it’d be fun to force me to have sex while I was unconscious died about a year later from cancer. Can’t say that I was glad to hear about it, but I failed to shed a single tear, though he was only 19.
There was a violent bipolar semi-homeless guy who used to hang around where I worked. When he killed himself I was more relieved than anything else.
I had one client who stiffed us on payment for a job. Actually, he gave me a check, then, some days later—on Christmas Eve—left a message on my voice mail that he couldn’t afford to pay me right now. When I got back from the holidays and checked my bank account, I saw that he had canceled payment for the check—after I had deposited it. (At the time, I was most furious with my bank for allowing this to happen.)
After 6 months of stern letters to him, I took him to small claims court, where I had to undergo the stress of waiting for the case to begin, plus go into mediation where I agreed to a settled payment from him, but still had to sit quietly and grind my teeth while he lectured me in front of the mediator on how the work I did for him couldn’t POSSIBLY have taken as long as the hours for which I was billing him. I took his check, ran to the bank, and never saw him again.
Later that year, I heard from a friend that he crashed his motorcycle and died. The karma and poetic justice quotient was high, there. But I still felt bad for his young daughter, who was now basically orphaned (her mother was a drug addict who had lost custody of her to him, so I don’t know where the kid wound up).
Definitely mixed emotions.
I feel much that way about my father. He was an asshole prone to sudden rages. I’m not happy he died, but I felt like a burden has been removed from me.
My dad has Alzheimer’s. It can’t happen soon enough.
Actually, I left something out of the description: The woman was so thin, you could see all of her bones, and she was white as a sheet. Yes, 2nd grade was not a happy experience for us. Many of us started having nightmares that year.
My uncle by marriage died of a heart attack. My father told me. My internal and verbal reaction was “good”. My fathers reply was, “yep”.
My uncle was a stone cold SOB. Pity the fucker couldn’t die twice.
Wow. This sounds so much like my father. He never actually hit us, that I recall, but I think that was more motivated out of “that would look bad” than anything else, and he certainly abused us every which way he could.
I haven’t spoken to him in 10 years and he’ll still, if he sees a glimmer of opportunity, attempt to control me in whatever tiny, petty way he can.
When he passes, I will support my mom and sibs as much as they need me to. And then after everyone is gone, I’ll go back to the cemetery alone and dance on the fucker’s grave.
It’ll probably be a few years yet (sigh), but he doesn’t do a damn thing to take care of himself (and in fact developed diabetes a couple years back because he hasn’t done anything except lie on the couch and watch TV for the last 20 years), so I’m hoping it’s fairly soon. My entire family will be better without him.
Other than that… there was a guy in my graduating HS class who was killed in a snowmobile accident a couple years into college. He was a total dick to me from about 3rd grade on through leaving for college. Although to be generous, he struck me as more the lackey/toady type, and probably was a dick because he lacked the spine to do his own thing in the face of all the “cool” kids who were dicks to me. Anyway, I wasn’t particularly glad that he was dead, but I wasn’t in any way sad or moved by it either. My mum thought she should take me to the wake, so I went, but it was pretty much a ho-hum deal for me, while nodding solemnly so my other former classmates wouldn’t guess that I actually just didn’t give a shit that he was dead. I did feel bad at how upset his sister was, though – she was a good person, and I hated to see her feeling so badly.
My cousin died in his 20s, suddenly, of a freak brain aneurysm thing. He was a misogynistic, mean, piece of crap. He was also nearly finished his studies in gynaecology.
When I heard he’d died, I said “I’m glad he won’t have the chance to fuck up any women’s lives”.
The idea of my bullying, misogynistic, woman-hating cousin being in charge of a woman’s reproductive system was just too much. He’d picked the career that gave him the ultimate power trip, and I’m truly glad he died before he had the chance to get established in it, and before he’d had the chance to have his own kids that he could poison to be just like him.
When the Gramps from Hell came home one day when we were all having lunch together and triumphantly announced that he’d donated his body to science a month before, Grandma was pissed.
Mom and Aunt looked at each other and said “he’s not doing it because he gives a shit about science of medical students, of course: he’s done it to piss her off.” “Well, it’s worked.”
My female cousin said “well, it sort of bothers me too.” I hummed a song called “I’ll Dance On Your Grave” (Siniestro Total, Bailaré sobre tu tumba) and she said “yep!”
He’s still around. But yeah, when he dies I’ll have to make an effort not to dance through the funeral.
I’m reasonably sure that my mother’s death will be a relief. I’m also reasonably sure that it’s a long way off and that, like Quadgop with his patients, I’ll do my best to ensure that she’s comfortable until then. But I can’t remember when was she ever someone I could trust, lean on, ask for advice or any of those things a mother is supposed to be good for; her reaction when the aforementioned Gramps tried to pimp me out was “don’t you dare let your father find out; yeah, Gramps is like that; learn to deal”. I’ve never missed her and I don’t expect to miss her when she’s dead.
Hell, that’s a Gustav Dore illustration!
I once went to work for a tiny, pissant little printing company. The owner was a fat, obnoxious, cigar-chompin’ old drunken redneck named Leon and the manager was a cringing, servile weinie by the name of Gary.
After I had been there two weeks and received my first paycheck, I noticed a discrepancy between the amout that I was paid and the amount that they had agreed to pay me prior to accepting their offer. I brought this to the manager’s attention. It was Friday, and he said that he’d discuss it with the owner over the weekend and get back to me.
Monday morning, 7:30, as I was shaving and getting ready for work, I get an apologetic call from Gary. Yes, he brought up the pay discrepancy with Leon. Leon had told him “…the new guy asks too many questions. Fire him.”
I filed for my unemployment compensation; even in a ‘right to work’ state, terminating an employee for “asking too many questions” is not a justifiable termination. Leon actually had the balls to try to block me from getting my benefits. We had to go before the State Employment Comission and have a hearing.
The state’s arbiter, a wonderful, sassy Nell Carter-lookalike, told Leon, “…you know you can’t just fire someone for something other than misconduct, right? You can’t just fire people willy-nilly because you don’t like the color of their hair, or they ask too many questions, right? Did you actually read any of the literature we sent when you started your company? Do you know how to read, sir?”
I got to continue receiving unemployment until I found a new job. Print workers tend to live in a closed system…kinda like carnies; they drift from company to company, everyone knows everyone else. I heard a lot of horror stories about Leon; sexual harrassment, wrongful termination, short paychecks, ‘fining’ employees for rule infractions (unposted rules, at that), unpaid overtime, etc.
Years later, I was working as a tech in a pre-press service bureau when a cat came in and mentioned he was the new owner of __________ Printing. I told him I had worked there for a brief period years earlier. "Oh, " he says, “did you hear that the former owner, Leon, died in a house fire? His ex wife set the house on fire with Leon passed out drunk on the sofa. Tragic, really.”
I picked up a bottle of champagne on the way home.
I have a few candidates, alive and kicking. Can’t think of being anything but glad once I hear the news, but I might be talking out of my ass, lacking the experience.
I don’t hate anyone that much. I think the opposite of love is apathy, not hate. So no, I have a person I’ll be “meh” at when she dies, but other than that, I’m lucky I have loved ones.
That said, I will running naked through the streets screaming for joy when Fred Phelps dies.
That’s what you like to see in your teachers. And the PTA didn’t move to get rid of this…person?
PTA doesn’t have the power to fire teachers…that’s up to the principal or the school board.